First Two Concerts of the Year

Went to my first two concerts of 2006 this week. On Thursday, I went to see Sleepytime Gorilla Museum" with Secret Cheifs 3 at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. I was surprised that SGM was the opening act, as they have a ton of equipment. I had also seen them last Hallloween, and the opening act had to play on the floor in front of the stage. The stage at the Catalyst is pretty big, especially for a club, and their home-made insturments and custom lighting equipment filled the stage. Yet they managed to tear it all down and the Secret Cheifs 3 managed to set up in an impressive 25 minutes. I didn't quite know what to expect from Secret Cheifs 3 as I only have one of thier cd's, and it's mostly a bunch of musicians supporting one central person instead of a band. They play insturmental Middle-Eastren-techno-surf-metal. The first song was just 3 people, and they were joined by 4 more for the remainder of the se, including 2 violin players (though 1 changed between guitar and violin throughout the night) and someone playing something on the floor that I wasn't able to see because of the monitors, but he was bowing something.

I spent Friday through Sunday in San Francisco to see the always excellent Kristin Hersh at the Swedish American Hall. It's been a while since I've seen her in her solo-acoustic mode. She did "two" sets, though she didn't take an intermission, the first being solo material, and the second being Throwing Muses songs, including several I never even imaged would work acoustically. (Mania!?!?! It sounded excellent).

I went to the farmers market in San Francisco on Saturday morning, and found some Xocolatl mix. It's realy good, though I personally would like a little more chili. It was raining Saturday, so I didn't do much other than walk around parts of the city I'm already familiar with, but did go to a couple of new places to eat. I used Hotwire.com again to get a hotel, and ended up staying once again at the Ramada International Plaza on Market. Not a bad place to stay, my only complanints would be the lack of plugs in the room (the one's I found barely held the plug for the phone charger in place), and the restaurant is way over priced for breakfast. (I expect hotel restaurants to be overpriced, but that was they can at least try to hide it better - that was the smallest $11 omellete I've ever seen.) The only reason I ate breakfast there was the rain.